1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for controlling a memory in a base station modem, and more particularly, to an apparatus and a method for controlling a memory in a base station modem supporting multiple users.
2. Background of the Related Art
Recently, as mobile terminals proliferate rapidly due to increasing mobile subscribers, the need for using limited radio resources effectively is highlighted. The quality of mobile communication service varies with the designs and features of base stations that connect the mobile subscribers to enable communication with each other.
The memory of a base station modem is typically a high priced system resource, and various algorithms for managing the memory more efficiently are being suggested.
Generally, there are two approaches for allocating memory areas. A first method is a dynamic allocation method in which the memory is allocated to respective users according to space requests required by the user connected to the modem. A second method is a fixed allocation method, in which the memory is divided into blocks of certain sizes that are defined in advance, and a block having a corresponding requested size is selected and allocated when memory is requested.
Both of the memory allocation methods described above may be performed by software. However, in case of the dynamic allocation, an additional step of calculating synchronization for re-allocating the memory to the user using the software is required. In addition, since the blocks of the memory are fixed in the fixed allocation, the memory cannot be allocated for a request greater than the allocated blocks, and the memory area is divided repeatedly for the requests smaller than the blocks. Therefore, the memory may not be further allocated, even if there is sufficient memory available to do so.
That is, the conventional memory allocating method for the base station modem is not able to perform non-continuous memory allocation when allocating the memory for multiple users, and the dynamic memory re-configuration cannot be made during operation.
The above references are incorporated by reference herein where appropriate for appropriate teachings of additional or alternative details, features and/or technical background.